


We’ll See

by RedHorse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon divergence - no first war, Kidnapping, M/M, Philosophizing, Romance, Seer!Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-25 22:00:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20378788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Harry Potter, the Order's sheltered Seer and most valuable asset, is kidnapped by Lord Voldemort.





	We’ll See

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolven_Spirits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolven_Spirits/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Wolven_Spirits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolven_Spirits/pseuds/Wolven_Spirits) in the [TomarryFlashExchanges](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/TomarryFlashExchanges) collection. 

> I changed the posting date to reflect that author reveals for the fest were today! If you're seeing it twice, sorry about that. But check out the other works in the collection! They're amazing!
> 
> Written for the flash fest exchange in 48 hours. I hope you enjoy, Wolven_Spirits! Due to the nature of the fest, there may be errors and I’d be happy to have them pointed out.
> 
> Prompt:  
“Taken: Harry Potter, the Order's sheltered Seer and most valuable asset, is kidnapped by Lord Voldemort.“

Malary’s Principle: the magical and metaphysical imperative which ensures a Seer, no matter how powerful, may never observe their own future. 

* 

Harry became a seer the usual way: his grandmother spilled the entire contents of an ancient Pensieve on him when he was a baby.

(She was never allowed to babysit again.)

* 

The Centaurs trained him. They did so grudgingly, but out of a belief that a true Seer had to be instructed in the art, regardless of species. He started at two, which was early, but by then the gift was so strong in him he was staring into his water cup at every meal, scrying.

He rode on their backs before he was a strong walker, and learned the deepest secrets of the Forest (then drank water from the spring that would ensure his insides boiled if he ever shared them). In the evenings Firenze, the least xenophobic of his mentors, brought him to the Forest’s edge and he went home with his parents. His evenings and many of his weekends were full of pranking uncles and his father’s cooking and his mother’s practical lessons in an effort to ensure he understood the wider world. He was happy.

That was Harry’s life for nearly fifteen pleasant years, until the Dark Lord Voldemort finally succeeded in launching his war.

* 

Harry had remained in the Forest, hidden away, since war broke out three years earlier. He only came to the Forest’s edge on occasion to meet one of the Order members and tell them whatever he could of Lord Voldemort’s plans. But for weeks, though Harry could predict some battlefield activity to come, he’d had no visions of Lord Voldemort himself. 

Strange, considering he’d been an almost-daily part of Harry’s life since he’d learned to focus his abilities and Dumbledore bade him keep a close eye on a certain revolutionary.

For some reason, though, he didn’t consider _ why _ he hadn’t seen Lord Voldemort, despite his best efforts, until the figure at the Forest’s edge whom he’d assumed was his uncle proved to be the Dark Lord instead.

He ensnared Harry at once. After all, Harry was mostly defenseless against magic. Lord Voldemort pulled him close and grasped something in his pocket. A port-key. It launched them away.

They landed in a quiet room with a fire burning and regarded one another.

“Here he is,” Lord Voldemort said. He was still holding Harry by the waist, and Harry’s hands were lashed together by a snug _ incarcerous. _ “The Boy Who Sees. For all their secrecy, I found you, and then I risked you seeing my plot. But before that I made a thorough study of your art, until I was certain there was no risk at all. Malary’s Principle, is it?”

Harry nodded. There was no point in lying about that. 

“Then I will keep you with me, always close. Fuse my future with yours, so you’ll never have the opportunity to plot a betrayal. And you will tell me what I must know to win this war at last.”

Lord Voldemort’s appearance was familiar to Harry, but he was much warmer and larger than he’d looked through a raven’s eye. His features were the slightest bit distorted by the Seer’s lens, too, just as a vampire would be. A consequence of dark magic and an imperiled soul. 

In person, Harry knew what he’d heard for years. Lord Voldemort was quite handsome.

It didn’t matter. Not really. Harry had seen him do — or at least order — so many terrible things. A pleasant aesthetic shouldn’t change Harry’s opinion.

But he was seventeen, and had spent most of his life in the company of Centaurs, who, in addition to their physical incompatibilities just weren’t his type.

Lord Voldemort on the other hand…

*

Harry’s conflicted mood didn’t improve as the days went on. He distracted himself with scrying when Lord Voldemort wasn’t trying to figure out how to force him to cooperate.

He first tried Legilimency, which revealed only a hazy white silence in the places in Harry’s brain where his visions were stored. 

He knew better than to try torture; anguish and physical trauma would only impair Harry’s sight.

They reached an eventual and uneasy truce: Harry _ would _tell Lord Voldemort of the future. Just not necessarily the parts he asked about.

*

Two weeks into Harry’s captivity, he was eating fresh figs while Lord Voldemort frowned out the window, rubbing his chin. “You’re sure? _ Solar_? Is that possible?”

“Yes,” Harry said, amused by how Voldemort seemed baffled by the achievements of Muggle technology, considering he could himself wield _ magic _.

“And they’ll fully utilize it by…?”

“2040. Imagine what they could do if it was subsidized.”

“If they were totally eradicated, they’d accomplish it tomorrow,” Voldemort snarled. 

For a moment Harry could see it. A sea of rotting bodies. It was within Voldemort’s power, if he let his anger take hold. Silent cities, and empty roads. Before long the dimming of satellites in the night sky and all the refuse of humanity’s last gasp spilling into the oceans for a thousand years. It was too late to leave the planet unscathed. 

“Or,” Harry began, his voice shaking, a fig falling uneaten from his numb fingers and back into the bowl, “let them clean up their own mess.” 

Voldemort’s eyes narrowed. He walked from the window to Harry’s chair, one of a pair in the chamber where Voldemort had kept him, adjoining his own. _ Close. Fused. _

His tidy dark hair, from this close, looked soft to the touch. Harry reminded himself sternly that he was lusting over a creature who’d obliterate a species on a whim, and without regret.

“Or that,” Voldemort allowed. He wiped a tiny bit of sweet juice from the corner of Harry’s mouth with his thumb, then popped it in his mouth. “We’ll see.”

* 

“What do you mean, I get _ bored _?”

Harry was flustered. “That’s just what I’m assuming. I only see what happens after I’m dead, obviously, so, eighty years in the future, more or less, but you just don’t seem to have your heart in it. 

Harry had graduated from confinement in their quarters and was riding a broomstick in circles in the garden. It was a toy broom, but still.

Lord Voldemort raked a hand through his hair. He wore loose summer robes and when the sleeves fell back Harry saw his forearms, which was a first. They were toned and gracefully curved with a web of dark scars on the underside of his left wrist. Harry almost fell off the broom.

Voldemort jerked his head around with a look of intense exasperation. Before Harry had steadied the broom himself, he felt Voldemort’s magic do it for him, and grinned.

“Thanks,” he said without thinking. It was the height of absurdity to thank a kidnapper, but Harry was bad at keeping things in perspective too long. Or rather, he had too much perspective. Or something; he was still figuring it out. The Centaur elders called it the Blessing of Absolute Relativity, but when they were feeling less cerebral they often jokingly referred to it as the Curse of Futility.

“You know, I _ can _ride a real broom.”

“No.”

Harry frowned. Voldemort had said it almost as quickly as his mother did when he asked her. He supposed without a dearth of normal wizard magic he could die in impact from a fall before anyone could heal him, but he was _ good _ on a broom. He didn’t think falling would be an issue.

“Do you regret your lot?” Voldemort asked. “If your magic hadn’t been converted to a single gift, you might have been a strong wizard.” 

“Nah,” Harry said. It was an easy answer because he’d been asked the question enough times before to have practiced it. “In the grand scheme of things I’m lucky.” And he meant that. The blessing was a blessing in that way.

* 

Harry was straightening the collar of his robes and trying without success to flatten his hair when Voldemort appeared in the mirror behind him, already dressed. Impeccably so, of course.

“Tell me what happens in a hundred years.” 

“That’s...very general.”

“What I’ll be doing, then. I insist.”

Harry sighed and unlocked the door in his mind that led to the future. He thought out the measure of a hundred passes around the sun, and all the intervening days, the ice that would form and melt and form again, the fragile flower petals uncurling in a vine wound so tightly against the mossy trunk of a willow tree, it was hard to discern one organism from the other.

When he had the time he thought of Voldemort, but instead of speeding on bird’s wings to the wizard’s side as he’d done so many times in his life, he found himself drifting in a dense white fog.

He opened his eyes. “I can’t see you.”

Voldemort’s lips tightened. A smile.

Harry’s heart pounded. “What did you…?”

But the answer was obvious: Malary’s Principle.

“I’ve decided I would prefer you remain alive.”

Harry looked down at himself, like the evidence would be visible. “You made me immortal? And I didn’t even notice?”

Voldemort smiled. They were late for the treaty signing, but Harry no longer cared if they kept everyone waiting. If the reunion with his family, which he’d yearned for these long months, was delayed. 

“So this means…?”

Close. Fused.

Voldemort calmly took his hand and lifted it to his mouth, so Harry felt a ghost of warm breath before Voldemort released him, unkissed. “We’ll see.”


End file.
